I must have fallen asleep from
exhaustion. When I awoke I was very hungry, and after busying myself
searching for fruit for a while, I set off through the jungle to find
the beach. I knew that the island was not so large but that I could
easily find the sea if I did but move in a straight line, but there
came the difficulty as there was no way in which I could direct my
course and hold it, the sun, of course, being always directly above
my head, and the trees so thickly set that I could see no distant
object which might serve to guide me in a straight line.

As it was I must have walked for a
great distance since I ate four times and slept twice before I
reached the sea, but at last I did so, and my pleasure at the sight
of it was greatly enhanced by the chance discovery of a hidden canoe
among the bushes through which I had stumbled just prior to coming
upon the beach.

I can tell you that it did not take me
long to pull that awkward craft down to the water and shove it far
out from shore. My experience with Ja had taught me that if I were to
steal another canoe I must be quick about it and get far beyond the
owner’s reach as soon as possible.

I must have come out upon the opposite
side of the island from that at which Ja and I had entered it, for
the mainland was nowhere in sight. For a long time I paddled around
the shore, though well out, before I saw the mainland in the
distance. At the sight of it I lost no time in directing my course
toward it, for I had long since made up my mind to return to Phutra
and give myself up that I might be once more with Perry and Ghak the
Hairy One.

I felt that I was a fool ever to have
attempted to escape alone, especially in view of the fact that our
plans were already well formulated to make a break for freedom
together. Of course I realized that the chances of the success of our
proposed venture were slim indeed, but I knew that I never could
enjoy freedom without Perry so long as the old man lived, and I had
learned that the probability that I might find him was less than
slight.

Had Perry been dead, I should gladly
have pitted my strength and wit against the savage and primordial
world in which I found myself. I could have lived in seclusion within
some rocky cave until I had found the means to outfit myself with the
crude weapons of the Stone Age, and then set out in search of her
whose image had now become the constant companion of my waking hours,
and the central and beloved figure of my dreams.

But, to the best of my knowledge,
Perry still lived and it was my duty and wish to be again with him,
that we might share the dangers and vicissitudes of the strange world
we had discovered. And Ghak, too; the great, shaggy man had found a
place in the hearts of us both, for he was indeed every inch a man
and king. Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal, too, if judged too harshly by
the standards of effete twentieth-century civilization, but withal
noble, dignified, chivalrous, and loveable.

Chance carried me to the very beach
upon which I had discovered Ja’s canoe, and a short time later I
was scrambling up the steep bank to retrace my steps from the plain
of Phutra. But my troubles came when I entered the canyon beyond the
summit, for here I found that several of them centered at the point
where I crossed the divide, and which one I had traversed to reach
the pass I could not for the life of me remember.

It was all a matter of chance and so I
set off down that which seemed the easiest going, and in this I made
the same mistake that many of us do in selecting the path along which
we shall follow out the course of our lives, and again learned that
it is not always best to follow the line of least resistance.

By the time I had eaten eight meals
and slept twice I was convinced that I was upon the wrong trail, for
between Phutra and the inland sea I had not slept at all, and had
eaten but once. To retrace my steps to the summit of the divide and
explore another canyon seemed the only solution of my problem, but a
sudden widening and levelness of the canyon just before me seemed to
suggest that it was about to open into a level country, and with the
lure of discovery strong upon me I decided to proceed but a short
distance farther before I turned back.

The next turn of the canyon brought me
to its mouth, and before me I saw a narrow plain leading down to an
ocean. At my right the side of the canyon continued to the water’s
edge, the valley lying to my left, and the foot of it running
gradually into the sea, where it formed a broad level beach.

Clumps of strange trees dotted the
landscape here and there almost to the water, and rank grass and
ferns grew between. From the nature of the vegetation I was convinced
that the land between the ocean and the foothills was swampy, though
directly before me it seemed dry enough all the way to the sandy
strip along which the restless waters advanced and retreated.

Curiosity prompted me to walk down to
the beach, for the scene was very beautiful. As I passed along beside
the deep and tangled vegetation of the swamp I thought that I saw a
movement of the ferns at my left, but though I stopped a moment to
look it was not repeated, and if anything lay hid there my eyes could
not penetrate the dense foliage to discern it.

Presently I stood upon the beach
looking out over the wide and lonely sea across whose forbidding
bosom no human being had yet ventured, to discover what strange and
mysterious lands lay beyond, or what its invisible islands held of
riches, wonders, or adventure. What savage faces, what fierce and
formidable beasts were this very instant watching the lapping of the
waves upon its farther shore! How far did it extend? Perry had told
me that the seas of Pellucidar were small in comparison with those of
the outer crust, but even so this great ocean might stretch its broad
expanse for thousands of miles. For countless ages it had rolled up
and down its countless miles of shore, and yet today it remained all
unknown beyond the tiny strip that was visible from its beaches.

The fascination of speculation was
strong upon me. It was as though I had been carried back to the birth
time of our own outer world to look upon its lands and seas ages
before man had traversed either. Here was a new world, all untouched.
It called to me to explore it. I was dreaming of the excitement and
adventure which lay before us could Perry and I but escape the
Mahars, when something, a slight noise I imagine, drew my attention
behind me.

As I turned, romance, adventure, and
discovery in the abstract took wing before the terrible embodiment of
all three in concrete form that I beheld advancing upon me.

A huge, slimy amphibian it was, with
toad-like body and the mighty jaws of an alligator. Its immense
carcass must have weighed tons, and yet it moved swiftly and silently
toward me. Upon one hand was the bluff that ran from the canyon to
the sea, on the other the fearsome swamp from which the creature had
sneaked upon me, behind lay the mighty untracked sea, and before me
in the center of the narrow way that led to safety stood this huge
mountain of terrible and menacing flesh.

A single glance at the thing was
sufficient to assure me that I was facing one of those long-extinct,
prehistoric creatures whose fossilized remains are found within the
outer crust as far back as the Triassic formation, a gigantic
labyrinthodon. And there I was, unarmed, and, with the exception of a
loin cloth, as naked as I had come into the world. I could imagine
how my first ancestor felt that distant, prehistoric morn that he
encountered for the first time the terrifying progenitor of the thing
that had me cornered now beside the restless, mysterious sea.

Unquestionably he had escaped, or I
should not have been within Pellucidar or elsewhere, and I wished at
that moment that he had handed down to me with the various attributes
that I presumed I have inherited from him, the specific application
of the instinct of self-preservation which saved him from the fate
which loomed so close before me today.

To seek escape in the swamp or in the
ocean would have been similar to jumping into a den of lions to
escape one upon the outside. The sea and swamp both were doubtless
alive with these mighty, carnivorous amphibians, and if not, the
individual that menaced me would pursue me into either the sea or the
swamp with equal facility.

There seemed nothing to do but stand
supinely and await my end. I thought of Perry — how he would wonder
what had become of me. I thought of my friends of the outer world,
and of how they all would go on living their lives in total ignorance
of the strange and terrible fate that had overtaken me, or unguessing
the weird surroundings which had witnessed the last frightful agony
of my extinction. And with these thoughts came a realization of how
unimportant to the life and happiness of the world is the existence
of any one of us. We may be snuffed out without an instant’s
warning, and for a brief day our friends speak of us with subdued
voices. The following morning, while the first worm is busily engaged
in testing the construction of our coffin, they are teeing up for the
first hole to suffer more acute sorrow over a sliced ball than they
did over our, to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was coming
more slowly now. He seemed to realize that escape for me was
impossible, and I could have sworn that his huge, fanged jaws grinned
in pleasurable appreciation of my predicament, or was it in
anticipation of the juicy morsel which would so soon be pulp between
those formidable teeth?

He was about fifty feet from me when I
heard a voice calling to me from the direction of the bluff at my
left. I looked and could have shouted in delight at the sight that
met my eyes, for there stood Ja, waving frantically to me, and urging
me to run for it to the cliff’s base.

I had no idea that I should escape the
monster that had marked me for his breakfast, but at least I should
not die alone. Human eyes would watch me end. It was cold comfort I
presume, but yet I derived some slight peace of mind from the
contemplation of it.

To run seemed ridiculous, especially
toward that steep and unscalable cliff, and yet I did so, and as I
ran I saw Ja, agile as a monkey, crawl down the precipitous face of
the rocks, clinging to small projections, and the tough creepers that
had found root-hold here and there.

The labyrinthodon evidently thought
that Ja was coming to double his portion of human flesh, so he was in
no haste to pursue me to the cliff and frighten away this other
tidbit. Instead he merely trotted along behind me.

As I approached the foot of the cliff
I saw what Ja intended doing, but I doubted if the thing would prove
successful. He had come down to within twenty feet of the bottom, and
there, clinging with one hand to a small ledge, and with his feet
resting, precariously upon tiny bushes that grew from the solid face
of the rock, he lowered the point of his long spear until it hung
some six feet above the ground.

To clamber up that slim shaft without
dragging Ja down and precipitating both to the same doom from which
the copper-colored one was attempting to save me seemed utterly
impossible, and as I came near the spear I told Ja so, and that I
could not risk him to try to save myself.

But he insisted that he knew what he
was doing and was in no danger himself.

“The danger is still yours,” he
called, “for unless you move much more rapidly than you are now,
the sithic will be upon you and drag you back before ever you are
halfway up the spear — he can rear up and reach you with ease
anywhere below where I stand.”

Well, Ja should know his own business,
I thought, and so I grasped the spear and clambered up toward the red
man as rapidly as I could — being so far removed from my simian
ancestors as I am. I imagine the slow-witted sithic, as Ja called
him, suddenly realized our intentions and that he was quite likely to
lose all his meal instead of having it doubled as he had hoped.

When he saw me clambering up that
spear he let out a hiss that fairly shook the ground, and came
charging after me at a terrific rate. I had reached the top of the
spear by this time, or almost; another six inches would give me a
hold on Ja’s hand, when I felt a sudden wrench from below and
glancing fearfully downward saw the mighty jaws of the monster close
on the sharp point of the weapon.

I made a frantic effort to reach Ja’s
hand, the sithic gave a tremendous tug that came near to jerking Ja
from his frail hold on the surface of the rock, the spear slipped
from his fingers, and still clinging to it I plunged feet foremost
toward my executioner.

At the instant that he felt the spear
come away from Ja’s hand the creature must have opened his huge
jaws to catch me, for when I came down, still clinging to the butt
end of the weapon, the point yet rested in his mouth and the result
was that the sharpened end transfixed his lower jaw.

With the pain he snapped his mouth
closed. I fell upon his snout, lost my hold upon the spear, rolled
the length of his face and head, across his short neck onto his broad
back and from there to the ground.

Scarce had I touched the earth than I
was upon my feet, dashing madly for the path by which I had entered
this horrible valley. A glance over my shoulder showed me the sithic
engaged in pawing at the spear stuck through his lower jaw, and so
busily engaged did he remain in this occupation that I had gained the
safety of the cliff top before he was ready to take up the pursuit.
When he did not discover me in sight within the valley he dashed,
hissing into the rank vegetation of the swamp and that was the last I
saw of him.